e vault overhead, and gilded to his right and to his left the two viscous walls of the passage. Stupefied, he turned round.
Behind him, in the portion of the passage which he had just passed through, at a distance which appeared to him immense, piercing the dense obscurity, flamed a sort of horrible star which had the air of surveying him.
It was the gloomy star of the police which was rising in the sewer.
In the rear of that star eight or ten forms were moving about in a confused way, black, upright, indistinct, horrible.
BOOK THIRD.--MUD BUT THE SOUL
CHAPTER II
EXPLANATION
On the day of the sixth of June, a battue of the sewers had been ordered. It was feared that the vanquished might have taken to them for refuge, and Prefect Gisquet was to search occult Paris while General Bugeaud swept public Paris; a double and connected operation which exacted a double strategy on the part of the public force, represented above by the army and below by the police.
Three squads of agents and sewermen explored the subterranean drain of Paris, the first on the right bank, the second on the left bank, the third in the city.
The agents of police were armed with carabines, with bludgeons, swords and poignards.
That which was directed at Jean Valjean at that moment, was the lantern of the patrol of the right bank.
This patrol had just visited the curving gallery and the three blind alleys which lie beneath the Rue du Cadran.